COMPARATIVE POLITICS AND

GOVERNANCE

Role of Politburo in Communist Regime

(China)

Name: Bhoomika GS
Reg No: 16040141030
Course: BA LLB (Hons)
Section: A
Batch: 2016-21

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………3
2. Communism in China……………………………………………………………………………4
3. China’s Chief Political Institutions………………………………………………………………5
4. The Chinese Communist Party…………………………………………………………………..6
5. The Political Bureau……………………………………………………………………………..6
6. Importance of Politburo………………………………………………………………………….7
7. China’s View of Democracy and Political Reform………………………………………………8
8. China’s SARS Outbreak of 2002-2003…………………………………………………………..9
9. Conclusion ..……………………………………………………………………………………10
10. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………11


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INTRODUCTION
The “communist system” is the title loosely applied to the political and economic organisation of
states which share the following general characteristics: they are ruled by a single party; they are
formally committed to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism; and a large part (if not all) of their
economy is in public hands. This system was eventually established in at least 14 countries around
the world, encompassing perhaps one-third of the world’s population at its height. It grew, in large
part, from the example—and even under the direction—of the first communist state established in
Russia from October 1917 (in the old-style calendar). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) had great influence over later communist states. But the “communist system” is not
monolithic. Many communist states have differed, in degree, from the Soviet model; many have
differed from each other on a range of issues, even about what “communism” itself means.
Presently, China is one of the countries that follows a communist ideology supported by the single
party system and politburo.
Of any political system it is essential to ask: who rules; how do they rule; how do the rulers deal
with change; and how do the rulers succeed one another? In the communist system, the simple
answers to these questions are that the communist party rules, that it rules by way of a state
structure which does not constrain its will, that it has no established procedure for dealing with
substantial change, and that succession in leadership is a process handled by the innermost circles of
the party with no public comment or accountability. The question of the relation between party and
state is central to understanding the communist system. Policy is the prerogative of the party, and
party members are placed in state positions throughout the country. Such placement is a task of the
party secretariat (whence it derived its enormous power).
The communist party is the single most important institution in the whole communist system. It is
not a party designed to aggregate and represent social interests; it is an instrument for taking power
and transforming society (see Political Parties). Thus when trying to determine the locus of power
in a communist system, it is not always appropriate to look simply at the head of state, such as a
president, or at the head of government, such as a premier. The real power has generally belonged to
the party leader, whether he be called Secretary, or General Secretary, and whether or not he also
holds the top state post.

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COMMUNISM IN CHINA
Analysing the political system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is difficult for many
reasons. The inner workings of China’s government have been shrouded in secrecy, and formal
institutions can mask the underlying dynamics of political power. In addition, because of China’s
Leninist history, it is easy to assume that politics in China is rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian,
whereas in reality, political power in China is diffuse, complex, and at times highly competitive.
Since the victory of Mao Ze-dong’s communist forces in 1949, the Chinese mainland has been a
communist state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although other minor political
parties exist, they are authorised by the CCP, operate under its leadership, and are effectively
powerless. No independently organised and established political parties are tolerated, effectively
making the PRC a one-party state.
Despite its position at the nexus of Chinese political life, the CCP and its leadership are not always
able to dictate policy decisions. Instead, the Chinese political process is infused with a number of
bureaucratic and non-central government actors that both influence and sometimes determine
government policy. These political actors include a muscular ministerial bureaucracy; provincial
and local officials; a growing body of official and quasi-official policy research groups and think
tanks that feed proposals directly into the policy process; a collection of state sector, multinational,
and even private business interests that bring more pressure to bear on policy decisions; a vigorous
academic and university community; a diverse media that increasingly brings issues of official
malfeasance to light; and an increasingly vocal and better-informed citizenry who are demanding
more transparency and accountability from government. In addition, China=s approximately 3,000-
member National Peoples Congress (NPC), largely a symbolic organisation for much of its
existence, has become somewhat more assertive in recent years, although it still cannot veto basic
Party policies. To a great extent, the fragmentation of process and decision making has blurred lines
of authority in China.
Chinese politics is further complicated by other factors. One is the role that personal, ideological, or
geographical affiliations can play in political decisions in the absence of a more formalised
institutional infrastructure. Individuals located in different arms of China’s institutional political
system may form political alliances on issues based on a history of personal friendship, shared
doctrines, or common regional ties. As the issue at hand changes, these affiliations also can change,
sometimes resulting in allies on one issue being opponents on another issue.
Another complicating factor is the propensity of PRC officials at all levels of government to render
Machiavellian interpretations of provisions in the national constitution. Officially considered the
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highest law in the land, the PRC constitution lays out a series of universally accepted principles, a
number of which appear to suffer seriously in implementation. Among noted examples are
provisions setting up the relatively acquiescent NPC as the “highest organ of state power”; and
provisions guaranteeing freedom of religious belief as well as “freedom of speech, of the press, of
assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”1 PRC officials routinely justify
actions to inhibit such freedoms by citing other constitutional articles requiring citizens to keep
“state secrets” and not take acts detrimental to “the security, honour and interests of the
motherland.”2 What constitutes a state secret or an act detrimental to national interests is left wholly
undefined. This opaqueness leaves citizens at the mercy of whatever definition suits a presiding
Chinese official on any given occasion, allowing the state easily to prosecute individuals for a wide
range of politically related activities.

CHINA’S CHIEF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

The main political structure of the PRC is comprised of two vertically integrated, but interlocking
institutions: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, or Party), headed by the Party Politburo and its
Standing Committee; and the state government (State, or Government) apparatus, headed by the
Premier who presides over the State Council, a de-facto cabinet. Throughout China, Party and
Government structures closely parallel one another, with Party committees and representatives
present not only in government agencies, but also in most organiSations and institutions, including
universities and foreign owned enterprises. The nominal leader of the CCP is the General Secretary,
but control of the Party is held collectively by its Standing Committee. China’s Government is
managed by the State Council, which is headed by its Premier.
The dynamic between the Party and the Government began to change in the 1980s under a political
coalition led by Deng Xiao-ping. A contemporary of Chairman Mao, Deng had been purged from
leadership positions several times under Mao for his reformist views. After Mao’s death in 1976,
Deng was able to gain enough support from other reform-minded colleagues to initiate economic
and political reforms. In 1982, the Party eliminated the position of Chairman, instead making the
General Secretary the Party’s highest-ranking official. To inject more pragmatism, practical
experience, and efficiency into decision making processes, reformers in the 13th Party Congress in
1987 instituted political reforms aimed at separating Party and Government structures and removing

1 Chapter II, Article 35 (freedom of speech) and Article 36 (freedom of religious belief); Chapter III, Article 57.
2 PRC Constitution, Chapter III, Articles 51, 53, and 54.
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the Party from most administrative duties, while allowing the Party to retain its supremacy in
defining broad policy goals and making final decisions on “sensitive issues”.

THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

Formally established in Shanghai on July 20, 1921, the CCP (Chinese Central Party) began as an
underground, Marxist-Leninist party organised into smaller groups (often referred to as “cells”) that
operated based upon the principle of “democratic centralism.” In theory, the CCP’s democratic
centralism allows for debate and discussion of policy among Party members, but requires
unquestioning support of policy once a decision is made. In practice, democratic centralism has
created a hierarchal political dynamic where senior Party officials expect disciplined compliance
from junior officials, but junior officials are allowed to comment on policy proposals before
decisions have been made. The Party’s most powerful policy- and decision-making entity is the
Politburo and its Standing Committee, comprised of the Party’s two dozen or so most powerful
senior officials.
The rest of the Party’s formal structure consists of layers of local, municipal, and provincial party
congresses and committees. The most important body in this structure of congresses is the National
Party Congress, a key meeting that the Party convenes in Beijing once every five years to set the
country’s overall policy direction and choose the members of the Party’s Political Bureau
(Politburo) and other senior Party officials. Lower party organisations are subordinate to higher
organisations, but the members of higher party congresses are selected by lower party committees.
The result is an interactive relationship where senior party officials obtain and retain political power
by maintaining the loyalty or support of lower party organisations.
The contemporary CCP is organised into an expansive, hierarchal network of organisations that
reach into many aspects of society. A wide variety of institutions—including universities and
schools, think tanks, state-owned enterprises, private corporations, and foreign-owned companies—
frequently have a party committee. Depending on the attitude of their leadership, these party
committees often wield significant power within the institution, even though they may not have any
formal authority.

THE POLITICAL BUREAU

At the top of the Chinese Communist Party’s political structure is its Political Bureau (Politburo),
generally regarded as the most important formal political institution in China. The official head of
the Politburo is the Party’s General Secretary. The size and membership of the Politburo changes
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with each Party Congress, a major meeting of the Communist Party held approximately every five
years. When the last (17th) Party Congress met from October 15-21, 2007, it announced the
selection of the current 25-member Politburo, including 9 new members.
Although officially the Politburo is the chief political decision-making body, its relatively unwieldy
size and its lack of a known formalised meeting schedule have suggested that the full body is
involved in decision-making only when the stakes are high—as when considering major policy
shifts, dealing with matters of immediate urgency, or when a higher level of legitimisation of a
particular policy direction is necessary. However, some analysts maintain that broader Politburo
participation appears more likely under the increasingly collective leadership that the PRC has been
moving toward since the Deng reforms of the 1980s.
One notable factor in the establishment of the current Politburo was the retirement at the 17th Party
Congress of four very senior Politburo members, all born before 1940.11 The retirements of these
four senior officials demonstrated the Party’s continued willingness to adhere to agreements for
mandatory retirement for Politburo members at the age of 68—one of the by-products of the Deng-
era reforms. In the absence of statutory discipline or electoral fiat, then, the Party appears to be
counting on precedent and its own internal discipline to try to institutionalise leadership succession
issues and avert potentially divisive power struggles.

IMPORTANCE OF POLITBURO
Why is the politburo important? The politburo not only chooses top party personnel, but also
establishes policy priorities for the subsequent five years. During the weeklong party congress
session, the delegates evaluate the party’s work over the past five years, assess the party’s current
status, and set guidelines for priorities of the coming five years. These deliberations are condensed
into a “political report,” delivered by the party’s incumbent top leader on behalf of the Central
Committee. At the 18th Party Congress, then-CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao delivered the report;
Xi will deliver the 19th Party Congress report.
The politburo also has the authority to revise the Party Constitution. Past revisions incorporated
guiding ideologies issued by the party chief. The 18th Party Congress in 2012 added to the
constitution’s preamble the statement that “reform and opening up are the path to a stronger China.”
Those revisions institutionalise the policy thinking of the current leader and signal the direction of
the party over the next five years.

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CHINA’S VIEW OF DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL REFORM
Although it is a broad U.S. perception that little or no political liberalisation has taken place in the
PRC since its creation in 1949, PRC leaders have periodically experimented with incremental
reforms in the country’s Party and government systems, often followed by periods of anti-reform
activity during which the Party strives to regain control and power. However, in contrast to the
United States where democracy is viewed as a goal, China has generally seen democratic reforms as
a means to an end or ends.
For example, the Chinese government began experimenting with limited village elections in the
1980s and has continued to allow some form of local elections to this day. Under the reforms, local
officials were to be selected by secret ballots and universal suffrage among the adult population of
the community, with competing candidates who may or may not be party members. However, in
many cases, local party officials and higher-tier government officials had the authority to disallow
candidates from being listed on the ballot.
The reasons given for the experimentation with local elections were varied, but generally did not
present democracy as a goal in its own right. Arguments to support local elections included:
fostering greater support for local leaders among the community; creating incentives for more
effective local governance; and providing a disincentive for local government corruption.
Another area where China has experimented with democratic reforms is in factory management. In
the 1950s, China tentatively allowed some factories to elect their top management to foster workers
support for the new government, identify better managers (based on the assumption that workers
knew who were the capable managers), and improve the quality of factory operations (under the
assumption that elected managers would be more concerned about effective management, or risk
losing their positions). Although this experiment with workplace democracy was largely abandoned,
it reappeared for a limited period of time in the 1980s for virtually the same reasons—workplace
democracy was viewed as a means of improving production efficiency.
More recently, the Party has implemented changes in the selection of senior party officials that
purportedly introduce limited competition.3 Referred to as “intra-Party democracy” (dangnei
minzhu), the system operates by allowing more candidates than there are open positions (in
Chinese, this is called cha’e xuanju). Like local elections, intra-Party democracy is seen as a means
of solidifying the legitimacy of the CCP, providing for “checks and balances” among top officials,
and improving government management.

3 Cheng Li, “Intra-Party Democracy in China: Should We Take It Seriously,” Leadership Monitor, No. 30, Brookings
Institute, Fall 2009.
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Although these and other political reforms have brought more rationality to the political process,
they have their limitations. They have not, for instance, led to the establishment of opposition
political parties, opened political and policy processes to broader public debate, or provided
predictable and regularised methods for selecting the next top leaders. Despite the above reforms,
then, the process of political succession in the PRC is still characterised by uncertainty. Decisions
often are made through a combination of internal campaigning, behind-the-scenes manipulation,
negotiation, and compromise among approximately 30 top senior leaders.

CHINA’S SARS OUTBREAK OF 2002-2003

One can glimpse the strains and contradictions in the PRC’s political system by reviewing the case
regarding the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China in 2002-2003. The
official response to the SARS outbreak illustrates that the universe of what effectively can be
controlled by the PRC’s core central elite today is shrinking, while the capacity of non-central
actors to manage, influence, inform, and interfere in political decisions and day-today activities is
expanding.
Harkening back to an earlier era in its history when central government powers were more
comprehensive, PRC officials in 1996 reportedly adopted a law, the text of which does not appear to
be available, that serious infectious diseases shall be considered state secrets unless and until the
government makes an official public announcement about the disease.4 The definition of what are
“state secrets” and who is entitled to know them is vague and arbitrary, as evidenced by the general
description contained in Article 2 of the state secrets law:
State secrets shall be matters that have a vital bearing on state security and national
interests and, as specified by legal procedure, are entrusted to a limited number of
people for a given period of time.5
Theoretically, PRC Party and government officials should have had extensive power to control and
manage developments in the SARS outbreak, and PRC officials attempted to do so. The first official
announcement about the disease was made by the Guangdong Provincial Health Bureau on
February 11, 2003, which reported limited cases of a mysterious illness. The following day, the
official Xinhua News Agency announced that the mysterious illness had been “brought under
control” and no new cases had been reported. Despite reports that millions of text messages were

4 Internal report prepared by the Library of Congress Asian Law Division, 2003.
5The Congressional-Executive Commission on China provides the text of the “Law of the People’s Republic of China
on Guarding State Secrets,”.
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reporting daily on the progress of the disease, PRC officials struggled to maintain this official story
through midMarch 2003, when officials from all over China attended the week-long first plenary
session of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing.6 On the second day of the NPC, a
state-owned newspaper in Guangdong Province reportedly incurred the wrath of the Guangdong
Party Secretary by violating the official blackout on SARS reporting.7
Government officials appeared unable to prevent mass migrations from SARS-affected areas,
prompting the Supreme People’s Court to announce new measures threatening to jail and even
execute citizens who did not comply with quarantine and travel restrictions.8 Villages and townships
took independent action not authorised or coordinated by Beijing, putting up barricades to keep
travellers out. Statements and actions by various PRC officials were uncoordinated and
contradictory. On April 3, 2003, PRC Minister of Health Zhang Wen-kang, despite evidence to the
contrary, reported that the disease had been contained and urged people to proceed with their plans
to travel to China despite a World Health Organisation travel advisory. It was not until April 20,
2003, that PRC officials, faced with overwhelming evidence of a SARS epidemic, apologised
publicly for their “leadership failure” and began reporting on SARS cases.

6 McDonald, Joe, “China Cracks Down on High-Tech SARS Rumors,” in Associated Press, AP Online, May 14, 2003.
7Washington Post foreign correspondent Philip Pan, in Out of Mao’s Shadow The Struggle for the Soul of a New
China, Simon & Schuster, 2008. The Guangdong paper was the Southern Metropolis Daily.
8 The Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced the new measures on May 14, 2003.
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CONCLUSION
Over the past five years Xi Jinping has revitaliSed the role of the Party and focused on reaffirming
its license to lead by tackling “prominent problems that prompt the strongest public reaction and
that threaten to erode the very foundation of the Party’s governance.” He has made the Party central
to China’s future. This was further cemented this week. Xi noted that “without the leadership of the
Party, national rejuvenation would be just wishful thinking.” There is now no question over the role
of the Party. The Party constitution, for example, was updated to stress the Party’s absolute
leadership over the military, and that the chair of the Central Military Commission (currently Xi
Jinping) will have overall responsibility of the military. Even the Party’s presence in foreign
invested companies has increased. Qi Yu, the deputy head of the Party’s Central OrganiSation
Department, stated during the Congress that at the end of last year more than 100,000 foreign
invested companies had established Party committees to bring together Party members working
inside the company, more than double the number at the end of 2011 before Xi Jinping came into
office. China’s Company Law requires companies to support the establishment of Party units. The
Party is effectively redesigning its image and role. It is increasing transparency in terms of its
decisions and its decision making process (in relative terms). The reforms will lead to an
increasingly visible and prominent Party in China. The previous theory of the separation of the
Party and the administration function in China, i.e. the State Council and the government, is
disappearing.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY
• https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2004_817-16_Gibianskii.pdf
• http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/CLM40AM.pdf
• https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41007.pdf
• https://www.brunswickgroup.com/media/3433/19th-party-congress-report-2017-10-27-
final_04.pdf
• https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/LeadershipReport.pdf

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